


What are you afraid of?

by AWammysHouseDropout



Category: Naruto
Genre: Anxiety, Freeform, Mental Instability, One Shot Collection, Panic Attacks, Phobias, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-24 11:11:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16173890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AWammysHouseDropout/pseuds/AWammysHouseDropout
Summary: Everyone is afraid of something. But some fears are a bit stronger than others.





	What are you afraid of?

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to do something like this for awhile, and October seemed like the perfect time to start! Each chapter will focus on one particular character, and the phobia I've selected as the theme. There may be the same character for multiple phobias, but with one planned exception, there'll be a unique phobia for each character.

**Autophobia: the fear of being abandoned, isolated, or left alone**

 

“Niisan, where are you going?”

Itachi pauses at the doorway. Sasuke turns his big, dark eyes up toward his older brother, pouting indignantly. 

“You said you had the day off!”

Itachi turns his head toward Sasuke, scowling like he’s annoyed.

“I do.”

“Then why’re you in your mission clothes?” Sasuke demands.

“I’m meeting up with Shisui to do some training,” Itachi answers.

“But I was hoping you’d help me with my homework today!” 

“I’ll only be a couple of hours. I can help you out then- or I’m sure mom can help you with it.”

Sasuke crosses his arms and tries to glare, pretending his eyes aren’t welling up with tears.

“You’re never around anymore,” he whines.

Itachi half-smiles at him.

“I’m sorry, Sasuke-”

“Ow!”

He pokes his younger brother square in the forehead.

“-Some other time, okay?”

Before Sasuke has the chance to protest any further, Itachi is out the door and gone, shutting the door behind him.

_ Niisan is always leaving. _

Even as he scolds himself for it, he sits on the floor by the front door and cries.

Cries because all he wanted was his big brother. Because no matter what, Itachi is always leaving him behind, going places he can’t follow.

_ Some other time, okay?  _

But that  _ some other time  _ never seems to come.

Mom finds him like that, sitting sobbing by the door.

(She knows why he’s so upset. Mom always knows.)

“Poor baby,” she croons, gathering him up into her arms and squeezing him tight.

He never wants her to let go.

 

_...Niisan is always leaving. _

No. Not Niisan. Not anymore. Never again.

Because, once again, Itachi has gone somewhere Sasuke just can’t follow. Only this time, he’s never coming back.

(He’s never coming back, big brother is  _ never  _ coming back, and he doesn't even know  _ why _ .)

Because now, Sasuke doesn't even have his mother to comfort him. Or his father, for that matter. Or anyone else who bore their name. He’ll never have Mom hug him tight and say she loves him ever again. Never hear Dad proclaim  _ “That’s my boy!”  _ like he’s wanted so badly. Never again see the aunts and uncles he’d loved so dearly. He’s all alone now, and it’s all because of  _ him- _

_ “You’re not even worth killing.” _

His throat feels tight- his chest hurts so  _ badly.  _ The room starts spinning around him, and he hears himself scream as though his own voice is a great distance away. A pair of nurses burst into the room; one of them pins him down while the other jabs a syringe into his arm, full of something that burns in his veins, and instantly makes him sleepy.

Even as he fades from consciousness, he tries to reach for the women as they leave. He’s half-aware of the tears rolling down his cheeks through the thick fog in his brain.

“Don’t go-” he manages to croak out.

The pair of them give him a pitying last look, but neither of them stay.

The door shuts. He’s alone again.

At least it isn’t long before the thick black of sleep consumes him.

 

Sakura really is annoying. At least, that’s what he tells her.

Always tugging at his wrist, always chatting in his ear, always  _ smiling  _ at him in that bright way that just makes him want to punch her in the teeth. She’s like a ray of sunshine- if that sunshine were shining through the curtains right in his fucking face when all he wants to do is sleep five minutes more.

Of course, he’d take her over fucking Naruto pretty much any day. Sometimes he swears that if he gets one more snide remark or dirty look, that blond bastard is gonna wind up with a kunai through his skull. Still, those are more tolerable than the incessant cheerful babbling that fills any moment of silence he could enjoy.

(What is it about  _ ramen  _ that makes the bastard so damn happy?!)

Most days he just wants to scream at the both of them.  _ Just leave me alone! Fucking get it through your heads, I want to be  _ **_alone!_ **

-Even though that would be a lie.

Even now, a part of him already knows it isn’t true- no matter how often he repeats it to himself. 

He sometimes remembers the lesson they had at the academy, where they’d very briefly went over the various methods of torture (there’s so very many ways to drive someone crazy, you know). They’d been informed that isolation is one of the most horrible ways a human being could torture another. That people had gone irreparably insane just from being denied contact with others.

(He’d aced that test, just like he’d aced all the others. He’d graduated at the very top of his class,  _ hey Dad, look at that- is that good enough for you?! _ )

He’s aware- acutely so- that isolation is painful. And yet-

He finds the idea of having actual  _ friends  _ even more frightening. Every time Sakura smiles at him, every time Kakashi gives them that approving nod when they do something right, every time Naruto does that  _ thing  _ where his angry expression melts into something warm, it’s like someone’s shoved a red hot knife straight into his gut. There’s a rock in his throat and a weight on his chest, and some days he has to run away to keep himself from screaming all over again.

Every time one of them is anything close to  _ friendly,  _ all he can think about is  _ the clan  _ and his  _ parents  _ and  _ Itachi  _ and how each and every one of them had left him all alone.

He can’t bear that again. He knows he’d finally go mad.

 

_ Itachi did it one last time. Going some place I can’t follow. _

Sasuke wonders if death feels anything like the icy numbness that’s settled into his veins in place of his blood.

He’s done it. After all these years, he’s finally done it. Itachi is dead- nothing more than a cooling sack of meat and bones in front of him. Dull, cloudy eyes stare sightlessly at the stone ceiling; that skinny chest of his is perfectly still.

(Sasuke still remembers laying his head against his brother’s chest, lulled into a half-sleep by its steady rise and fall. Sometimes he’d worry, whenever those breaths seemed wheezy or thin.)

He’s finally done it. Itachi is finally dead. He should at least be feeling  _ something. _

The man called Madara watches him as he kneels by Itachi’s bedside; Sasuke can feel his single eye burning into the back of his head. Itachi’s hand is cold and stiff in his, his long fingers crooked and arthritic.

(They look like they were painful. He wonders just how badly his big brother had to suffer.)

Someone (maybe Madara, or maybe the blue bastard who calls himself Itachi’s partner; he isn’t sure, and he doesn't care) has cleaned Itachi’s body up as best as they could, dressing him in a plain white funeral shroud, and that necklace Itachi seemed to treasure. Hair that had been tangled and matted and plastered to his forehead with blood lays as sleek and flawless as Itachi had liked it when he was living.  The gashes and scrapes and bruises have been treated and bandaged even though Itachi doesn't need those sorts of things anymore.

Sasuke can’t bring himself to speak. Or cry. Or rage. 

He lays his forehead against his brother’s, and inwardly curses Itachi for, one last time, leaving him alone.

Slowly, like a pot on the stove, anger starts to bubble up in the bottomless well where his heart should be.

Anger at Itachi for leaving. At his mother and father for their blindness. 

But most of all, anger at Konoha, for allowing him and his brother to suffer so.

He’ll make sure to pay them back for what they’ve done. They’ll pay for making his beloved older brother abandon him.

 

Naruto. Uzumaki Naruto.  _ Fucking  _ Uzumaki Naruto.

Sasuke wants to scream and cry and laugh all at once, and even then it probably wouldn’t be enough to stave off the  _ panic  _ inside him.

After nearly four years of running, four years of hiding, Naruto is still there, staring him down, repeating  _ “I’m taking you home!”  _ like a mantra. Even as their fists collide, even as they pummel each other into bloody pulp, Naruto repeats the words like a chant.

And every single time Sasuke demands  _ why,  _ it’s the same answer.

“Because we’re friends!”

Friends.  **_Friends._ ** The word terrifies Sasuke more than any other. He tries to squash it, to make Naruto shut  _ up  _ and stop spewing that babble, but it  _ doesn't fucking end. _

It isn’t until later- far later, actually- that he finally realizes what Naruto has been saying all this time.

That despite his incessant  _ pushing  _ and raging and anger- he will not be abandoned. That despite his fear, there are still people (however few in number) that have stood by him. That  _ will  _ stand by him.

They lay there together on the cool ground, and, for the first time since he was eight years old, Sasuke allows himself to cry.

Naruto is right there to cry with him.

  
  
  
  



End file.
